The sr4 Playbook, On The Path to Sustainable Change

On The Path to Sustainable Change

The sr4 Playbook

The sr4 Playbook: On The Path to Sustainable Change by sr4 Partners LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at subsumeandresonate.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sr4partners.squarespace.com/>http://sr4partners.squarespace.com/ Copyrights of the illustrations included herein are owned by and used with permission from tom mcCain of crittur dot com. Any reproduction or distribution of these illustrations separate from The sr4 Playbook: On The Path to Sustainable Change is expressly prohibited.

On The Path to Sustainable Change, there are always The Few who know – and The Many who are thinking of other things; The Few who decide what to do – and The Many who determine how much gets done; The Few who see something new and different – and The Many who have heard it all before. Between The Few and The Many, there’s a chasm – The Chasm of Disconnect. Sustainable Change depends on crossing the chasm to connect The Few with The Many. This Playbook is for anyone who’s on The Path – to flash the alert that somewhere up ahead, The Chasm awaits. To cross it, we offer four basic plays. Use them to align the behaviors of The Many with the intentions of The Few, and generate the results you had in mind when you first started out on The Path.

The Path to Sustainable Change begins wherever someone has a clear intention to create a future that is different from the past. They then enlist a small number of people to discover, debate, define and design a departure from the way things have been. After months of careful deliberation, this hand-picked “Few” arrive at a plan for change. But a funny thing has happened: The Few have now become so immersed in their thinking about things as they might be, that they have lost all ability to see through the eyes of The Many who are equally immersed in things as they are. So The Few create a PowerPoint and invite The Many to a meeting. For The Few, this meeting is a bright shining gateway to a new kind of future; for The Many, it is a brief and inconvenient interruption of a highly demanding present. In this chasm between The Few and The Many, countless worthy intentions are robbed of their full potential.

The Few & The Many

With the first play, you declare your intentions. This is where you paint a picture of moving from a current state to a desired state. With the second play, you look for signs that somewhere, some of the time, someone is already doing something that to some extent approximates fulfillment of your intentions. That will be your initial definition of what good looks like. You use the third play to connect through kinship – which is helpful in rallying people to a cause. With the fourth play, you start inducing your desired state – not with a “big bang” approach, but by igniting small beginnings wherever work is being done.

Crossing The Chasm

Play #1: Declare Your Intentions

Answer these questions:

What, exactly, do you want done differently?

Why is it worth doing?

When do you expect to start seeing results?

There’s a reason you want something to change. So what is it? It can’t be vague. It can’t be convoluted. It can’t be abstract. It must be clear, concise and actionable. And you have to state it in unequivocal terms. Secondly, your intention has to be worth working for – The Many are more likely to sign up for a cause they can believe in than to dedicate themselves to an analytical rationale. Thirdly, there has to be a time dimension. There’s a huge difference between “a man on the moon” and “a man on the moon by the end of the decade.”

Your approach on The Path will be strength-based. That means you don’t tear down what’s already there and start over from scratch. Rather, you search the status quo to find the closest example of the change you’re looking for – and build on that. Upon finding the best available example of your desired state, you say: we’re looking for more of this, more fully, more often, more widespread, with more consistency. In this play, you are trying to help The Many see what you want them to do differently. You will be most successful when you engage people at the level of their daily routines, helping them discover how practical changes inside familiar parameters will drive different outcomes.

Play #2: Define What Good Looks Like

Build on your strengths

Use ordinary words and examples

Work at the level of daily routines

This play is based on the observation that people are more likely to rally to a cause than to mobilize behind an organizational objective. And they are more likely to embrace a cause when they are invited by someone they know and trust, and they feel the cause is about them and not some abstract goal. Therefore, with this play, you will find ways to build a sense of kinship among everyone involved, which will enable them to begin to feel a connection with your cause. First, create Authentic Empowerment, by showing a genuine interest in the personal motivations of others. Second, demonstrate Cultural Awareness, by focusing on the diverse capabilities of a group or team. Third, generate Empathic Understanding, by fine-tuning the way you listen and respond.

Play #3: Connecting through Kinship

Create Authentic Empowerment

Demonstrate Cultural Awareness

Generate Empathic Understanding

In running this play, you are focused on transferring ownership of sustainable change from The Few to The Many. You are removing barriers that might inhibit the uptake and spread of change across boundaries of function, geography and accountability. And in terms of the ground-level actions required, you are driven by a single reminder: dare to think small. Because succeeding on The Path to Sustainable Change is steeped in ordinariness: it’s local, it’s practical, it’s endlessly underwhelming.

Play #4: Ignite Small Beginnings

Transfer ownership to The Many

Remove the barriers

Dare to think small

The path of ordinariness: local, practical, endlessly underwhelming.

sr4 Partners LLC135 S. LaSalle, Suite 2100Chicago, Illinois [email protected]